July 30th: The Culture of Violence

Prompt for Hybrid Day

Last class we watched 2 videos that portrayed women performing roles that, on first glance, appear to be the same--girls kissing girls. Thinking of gender performativity, what can you say about the two portrayals? What roles do the women seem to conform to? As usual, respond to a classmate's post from last Thursday (7/25). This prompt and the second one (extra credit) are on moodle.

Miedzian's "The Culture of Violence"

This interesting work discusses how a particular group, the Kurnai tribe of Australia, might describe the cultural webs and irrationalities of American culture. She specifically points out the violent aspects of American culture that are portrayed in the media.

• American society raises its "boys to be tough, emotionally detached, deeply competitive, and concerned with dominance" (Miedzian, p. 178).

• American culture has an idea that boys who play with dolls or other "girl toys" might turn out to be gay, a particularly peculiar irrationality since these boys, in the heteronormative vein, are supposed to grow up to be fathers (Miedzian, p. 177-178).

• There's a market for violent toys for children (Miedzian, p. 178).

Frasca, Gonzalo. "Videogames of the Oppressed"

Making socially conscious video games could help simulate "real world" issues:

• "Narrative is based on semiotic representation, while videogames also rely on simulation" (Frasca, p. 86).
• "Simulation is an ideal medium for exposing rules rather than particular events" (Frasca, p. 87). Simulations of anything--flying, bowling, urban planning, etc.--allow users to perform in a virtual space that, depending on the level of technical sophistication, "replicates" the real world referent (at least, in theory).
• Frasca advocates designers consider open source games for players to try out and discuss, which could "serve to explore alternative ways of dealing with real life situations" (Frasca, p. 90).
• What does "open source" represent in a culture that consumes lots of proprietary software?
  Does "open source" software fit into our culture?

Tomorrow

We're going to meet in the Fretwell 219 computer lab on Wednesday, 7/31 and Monday, 8/05 (ask Shane if anyone is in there after his 4:15 class...). I'm not expecting you to be videographers or installation artists, but I'd like you to try to incorporate multimodality/ies into this Multimodal Essay/Project.